Auburn

Auburn is the most historically significant small city on the lake. The Quaker abolitionist network that made it a hub of the Underground Railroad attracted Harriet Tubman, who settled here in 1859 through a land arrangement with William H. Seward that held the mortgage in his name while she was legally a fugitive with no property rights. She spent 54 years in Auburn. Seward, two blocks away, served as Secretary of State under Lincoln and Johnson. Frederick Douglass visited regularly. The density of 19th-century American history within a ten-minute walk of Auburn's center is without parallel anywhere in the region.

The Harriet Tubman National Historical Park encompasses Tubman's residence, the Home for the Aged she built, and the Thompson AME Zion Church. The Seward House Museum preserves the original furnishings, the Alaska purchase papers, and the physical weight of the 19th century in its rooms. The Willard Memorial Chapel on Nelson Street is the only complete, unaltered Louis Comfort Tiffany interior remaining in the United States: every window, tile, fixture, and piece of oak furniture designed in 1894 and preserved because the adjoining seminary closed before anyone renovated it. Start at the NYS Equal Rights Heritage Center on South Street to orient the full story before walking to each site.